


People Forgotten, A World Imagined

by BenevolentErrancy



Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Book: Dragon Age - Asunder, Character Study, Gen, Post-Champions of the Just
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-14
Updated: 2016-11-14
Packaged: 2018-08-30 23:43:04
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,893
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8554321
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BenevolentErrancy/pseuds/BenevolentErrancy
Summary: For the Inquisitor and his advisors, the moment Cole appeared in the center of the War Tables was as sharp and sudden as an unexpected crossbow bolt.For Cole, it was anything but.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I was cleaning my writing folders up and realized that this was a short character study from forever ago that I'd never gotten around to posting here. It's a short, pointless thing but it seems like it may as well go up. It was originally a prompt on my tumblr.

High on a mountain there sat a castle of stones so old and weathered that they were nearly a part of the mountain themselves, and in the heart of that castle there sat a room, with towering ceilings and sweeping windows, letting cold, thin sunlight filter in and cast a brightness one wouldn't expect in a room that held such dark secrets.  In that room, in its very centre, there sat a table, one of mighty, split timber, wood so old it was almost as strong as the stone itself.  For a long time, this table had sat alone in this empty room in an empty castle until recently when a life had once more sprung up around it and suddenly its hefty surface was again covered with maps and tokens and plots.

It was in this room that Cole sat.  He had started in a corner, tucked aside, small, out of the way, before he remembered that Rhys didn’t like it when Cole was suddenly behind him; it made him scared, jumpy – and it made Evangeline reach for her sword.  Cole didn’t want to upset anyone and there were templars in this room and he didn’t want them to attack him, so he had moved.  Instead he now sat quietly at the centre of the big table, so he wasn’t behind anyone, and it was from there that he listened to the voices.

Even with these angry voices rumbling and filling it, it was a good room, Cole felt. It did its best: it was big and strong but it also held heavy, dangerous secrets in the rafters of its high ceiling.  You became heavier coming into a room like this, because all those secrets started to settle on you. It was even heavier now than when Cole had first stepped into it as he silently following in the footsteps of the person whose mind Cole had been in, the one at Therinfal with the mind so bright it hurt to look at and who smelt like the Fade.  The one who moved with armour because he expected to be hurt and carried a sword because he wanted to protect.  It was very strange.  When Cole had first entered this room with the man it had only been the old secrets – secrets stretching back for centuries – and the soft bruise of recent but past arguments that filled the room.  Now though voices were raised in anger once more as the people around the table clashed.

They were… angry, at what the person Cole had met had done.  But it was important that the man had done what he did!  The templars were being choked by the old song, the red one, the wrong one.  They would have been taken by it, turned into something monstrous that’s only thought was to hurt.  And if they hadn’t wanted to be turned… they would have been hurt too.  Templars were… dangerous.  Sometimes they forgot that people were people and created pain to hide terror, but they weren’t all bad.  Evangeline hadn’t been bad.  And Cole was happy that this person – the other people called him herald which was odd, because that was a verb, but maybe it made sense because the man was made of action, there was nothing still about him – had stopped the pain and terror that had been growing in those templars. Glad he stopped them before they became something no one should want to be.  It had been the right choice.

Twisting his fingers together, apart, together, Cole waited.  He should say something, he suspected – tell them he was here to help.  But the Herald seemed to buzz with energy and intention, and Cole couldn’t tell when the right time to speak was; even just looking at him was burning, bright, painful to try to decipher and left him grasping, confused. He had trailed behind the Herald and his party all the way back from Therinfal Redoubt, not saying anything then because he had had nothing to say.  He had helped the Herald, and the Herald had stopped Envy from hurting others to make himself real.  That was good; Rhys and Evangeline had stopped him too when he had hurt others to find himself, only Envy wouldn’t listen to the words and had to be killed. Cole too would have to be killed if he ever did that again, but he hoped it wouldn’t happen; he never wanted to fall to despair again, never wanted to become something that killed for himself.

These thoughts of Rhys made it pleasant, familiar, to follow behind the Herald and his people along the long road up the mountains.  It made him remember when Rhys, Evangeline, the Old Woman, and the one with Red Hair had first set out for Adamant, except then Rhys had kept checking back, looking to see if Cole was following.  Remembering. If the Herald had looked back for Cole, he would have shown himself, but no one looked back so Cole had followed far enough back to stay out of the way and undetected, but close enough not to get lost in the big world that existed beyond the towers and fortresses.  He had thought he might say something at the hold in the mountains (ancient, crumbling, happy to be filled with life again, bursting with purpose, filled with people scared, hurt, determined) but everyone seemed very busy.

“A few dozen veterans are coming ahead of the rest to seal the breach,” said the human with red hair. Cole knew her.  She was the Sister who… was a Sister but wasn’t a Sister.  She was but she didn’t think she was a good one.  She had helped them save Rhys and the mages.  She didn’t feel the same as before, a joy had dimmed and a grief had been sharpened inside her like a blade, and she wielded it with a finesse.  She was mourning, alone, lost, afraid of missing but afraid of forgetting.  She remembered the smell of a perfume, delicate and soft, floral.  Cole knew the smell, there had been bushes of flowers like that in the foothills before the mountains– perhaps he could place some on her window sill, bring back soft memories to quiet the pain…

“How soon until these veterans arrive?”

Cole’s mind stepped away from the memories as he reminded himself that they weren’t important right now, what was important was the words they were saying.  Words were important in a room like this.  And Cole _knew_ this answer, Cole could help.

“They’re almost here,” he said.  “Templars don’t like to be late.”

That had been… a mistake.  He had sat in the middle so he didn’t scare anyone, but it hadn’t worked.  The lady in gold jumped back so fast her candle teetered and ink sloshed, and the templars had their swords out.

 _Templars. They are people made of metal and edges, of an old song that filled them up and made them desperate and made them hate.  He could_ remember _the day they had come for him_ _– for Cole _– , could remember__ _being taken away, remember fighting and desperation and feeling the blunt hilt of a sword hit the back of his head until he had dropped and could be dragged.  They had thought he was dangerous but he had just been scared, small.  He had wanted his sister, his family – even awful they were better than swords and muscle hidden behind helmets._

_He remembered the sound of metal shifting from the other side of a cell's door as he sat in the dark. Remembered wanting them and their swords to never come back, to forget him in the dark.  And then he was forgotten._

_He remembered his fear of them as he hid in the Pit, avoiding the higher floors where the templars prowled.  He remembered the fear the mages had, so cloying and thick that it became normal among the Spire's halls.  Sometimes it became anger instead, sometimes it became despair, sometimes it sang to him and sometimes it made him sick._

_He remembered the Lord Seeker, who was a templar without being a templar, with no song in him but the blaze of the Fade, who made things real and had made him less real.  Who had tried to kill Rhys, and had kill Cole instead, and who did make Rhys hate him._

Cole peered out from beneath his hat, and he felt fear.  But he tried to remember Evangeline, and he tried to remember the young templars who had been so afraid at Therinfal and didn’t want to be taken.  The templar in furs circled the table, his sword drawn; he would kill Cole.  But his heart was full of pains.  He had killed people, mages; he had hated them, he had made them less human, he had been a templar that had forgotten that mages were people and had filled them instead with the horrors of his past and the words of an evil woman.  But he wasn’t that anymore, and he was scared.  Scared of what had happened with the demons at the Circle, scared of what he had been for so many years, scared of what he was becoming now, scared of what he might become again.  The woman with her sword on the other hand was not a templar; she was like the Lord Seeker, but without the dark.  She still believed, and her hurts didn’t call for him so strongly because she wanted to make them better herself.

Cole didn’t know if they would try to kill him, didn’t know if he would have to kill them instead, but he hoped not.  He wanted to help. Then the Herald spoke, called them off, and they paused but didn’t lower their swords.

“I came with you to help,” Cole explained.  He needed them to understand that he was not Envy.  “I would have told you before, but you were busy.”

The Herald’s eyes were wide, he was shocked too, and for a moment Cole was afraid he had forgotten him already.  But then the Herald’s face hardened and he gestured sharply even though he held no sword.

“Off the war table, Cole.  Now.”

They were angry.  That wasn’t what Cole had wanted.  He hadn’t known the table was important, or even that tables _could_ be.  He looked down at its surface, at the map that tried to be a world _–_ except that a world was made of people and feelings and the ink was a poor attempt at mimicry.  It marked rivers and mountains but forgot everything else.  On it though were little tokens, and it seemed appropriate.  A tiny crow, a tiny sword, to represent where people had been chosen to die, on a tiny map to represent where these people had lived.  It was a fake world that a handful of people moved game pieces around on that affected the real world.  That was war.  Intentional hurt and pain, followed by so much unintentional hurt and pain, decided on by people that forgot that people were people and instead turned them into tokens and made decisions.

“Yes, I don’t belong here,” Cole agreed, carefully shifting so that he didn’t knock the pieces over but could get down from the table.  “I am not a war.”

He hoped the Herald wasn’t a war either.


End file.
